


Memory Plunder

by Mertiya



Series: Story Circle [39]
Category: Magic: The Gathering (Card Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breathplay, F/M, Fix-It, It's not fixed but it's better now, Jace and Vraska are both a little bit broken, Mild BDSM Overtones, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tentacles, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Yes he calls her Captain, it's okay i gotchu, this was what you were going to write wasn't it wotc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:53:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22427395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Vraska decides not to return to Ravnica at all for War of the Spark. Afterwards, someone comes to find her.
Relationships: Jace Beleren/Vraska
Series: Story Circle [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/418990
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31
Collections: stories of our own: works featuring nonbinary and trans characters





	Memory Plunder

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to sheep, vez & zomb
> 
> mildly spoilery content warnings in the end note

Vraska made the right decision. For weeks, she has been questioning herself, looking up into the sky as if that’s where the Blind Eternities are, as if she can find answers written in the clouds. In the end, she does find the answer in the sky, but it’s not the clouds.

She’s on watch, in that kind of quiet loneliness that once in a while she needs to clear her head, and she’s looking up at a cloudless sky, with the Ixalan stars shining clear above her, and she knows. She made the right decision. She may always want to return to Ravnica, and perhaps someday, she’ll go back, but out here—she’s free, in a way she never was there. Free to be herself, free to make her own decisions, and beholden to no one. She will never be beholden to anyone ever again.

Dawn is rising by the time her watch ends, and Malcolm flies up to relieve her. He must see something in her face, because he gives her a confused smile and says, “Good night?”

Vraska gives him a nod and a smile and then vaults her way down the rigging. She’s tired, but it’s a good tired. The knowledge that she’ll sleep soundly in her own bed for a few hours before being woken by Amelia is a tight well of warmth inside her chest. Even warmer, the fact that she controls where they sail now. No more compass. Just the tug in her chest, towards adventure. Towards freedom.

There’s a light shining beneath the door of her quarters, and she frowns. She would not have left a candle burning—it’s not safe. But who…? Paranoia rears its ugly head, but she dismisses it. Perhaps one of the crew has a question for her.

She steps through the door and freezes, because it would be hard not to recognize the man standing hunched over her desk, shoulders bowed in weariness below that thrice-damned blue cloak. _Beleren._

She wasn’t quiet enough when she entered, and he’s already looking up. No time, then. She crosses the cabin in a rush, pulling a knife from her belt and backing him up against the desk, knife at his throat, realizing only as her tentacles wrap around his throat that she has no way of knowing that this isn’t an illusion, that she may have just fallen right into his trap. “Give me one reason, Beleren,” she snarls. “Just one, and I swear—”

He’s so tired. There are deep, dark circles beneath his eyes, and his face is thin, the expression on it melting from loss into—relief? Why does her heart twinge like that at how thin he looks? How—broken?

“Captain,” he says, and then he fists his hands in the front of her shirt and buries his face in her chest. “Vraska. Krokt. I missed you so much.”

How did he—she looks down. Her body simply moved the knife out of the way of his motion, effortless, without her thinking about it. What’s going on—is he inside her head? Is he controlling her? Why is he—

He looks up at her, and it’s too late. Somehow, her guard is down. Somehow, she’s lost before the fight has started, because his eyes are glowing bright blue from inside as he raises a hand to touch her face, making a gesture as if he’s sweeping away a set of cobwebs—

~

_Water. A hand in hers. Blue eyes looking at her in sudden fear, when those eyes should no longer have any fear of her._

_Gods, what did she do to you, Jace?_

_No bookshop would have been safe._

_The way his shoulders go tense. The way she recognizes that tension in herself. The way they are both the same and never knew it before, flung together against one another, both trying to fulfill the role they were given, when it was nothing either of them had ever wanted—_

_~_

Vraska stumbles backwards. Exhausted, Jace barely manages to get a hand underneath her back in time to catch her. “Jace,” she rasps. The knife falls to the floor with a heavy noise. “Oh, gods below, I’m sorry.”

“Hey.” His throat is tight, and he knows there are tears pricking at his eyes, but he steadies her easily. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

“I…” she trails off. “I never came back.”

Jace nods jerkily, and she pulls away from him, still frowning. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, and he won’t look. She paces over to the little porthole.

“Bolas?” she asks.

“Gone.” Not a lie, anyway. Maybe someday he’ll be able to tell her the whole truth, but it’s not what she’s asking, so it doesn’t matter. Not really.

“Gone,” Vraska echoes. “So…it’s all over. Whatever it was.”

She’s not looking at him. Jace pulls the hood of his cloak up and over his face. Is he going to lose her, too? He can’t lose her, too. He grinds his teeth down against the desire to beg for her not to leave.

When she turns, she’s smiling a little. “So we’re free?”

Jace turns a nod into a shrug halfway through. “Bolas is gone, but Ravnica is gutted. And—” it’s such a struggle to say. “My best friend is dead. I failed him. I failed all of them. I—” He presses his lips down against the torrent of words again. “He sacrificed himself for Liliana.”

“For your ex girlfriend?”

He manages a nod this time. “She—turned against Bolas in the end.”

“In the _end_?”

The _anger_ on Vraska’s face. If only she had been there. Jace pulls his cloak around himself and can’t suppress a sob, and then her arms around him again. “Jace. It’s not your fault. There is no way that is your fault.”

How does she _know_ that’s what he’s thinking? He laughs ruefully. “You’re not supposed to be the telepath,” he mumbles, and that makes her laugh as well.

“You don’t have to be a telepath to know how people hurt,” she says. “Jace.”

She’s taller than he is, and he has to look up, and then her tendrils are carefully brushing the tears away from his eyes. “I’m not the man you knew on Ixalan,” he says softly. “Not with all my memories in my head.”

“And I’ll never know what _I’d_ be like without mine,” she says.

“Would you like to?” he can’t resist saying, and she blinks at him in surprise, then laughs softly.

“Maybe someday.” She takes his hand. “I want to know you. I know that man is in there somewhere, after all. I want to know who you are here. Who you are healing. I want you to know who I am, healing. And it sounds like we have time for that—now.” 

He’s been running for so long it’s almost hard to process her words. But she’s not wrong. Jace takes a gasping, shuddering breath as he realizes that she’s right. There _is_ time now. Time to grieve. Time to mourn. Time—to heal. “And you want that?” he can’t stop himself from saying.

“Jace. You are useless without your telepathy. I _just_ said that.” 

He blinks and laughs at himself. “Right. You did. You really did.” Her tendrils are still on his face, stroking gently through his hair, and it’s easy for him to lean up just a little and close the distance between them, to press his mouth into hers; he’s been wanting to for so long. He’s fallen asleep on Ravnica, in the middle of rubble, in the middle of crying over Gideon’s loss, still wanting to. Wanting her.

This is as far as he really fantasized. He didn’t expect the eagerness of her response, the way she presses herself against him and deepens the kiss. He didn’t expect the way her desire feels, overwhelming his shaky mental shields, dark and warm and safe, a pull that feels like the safety of a dark warm forest closing in around him. “ _Vraska_ ,” he whispers against her mouth, his hands tightening on her shoulder blades, and she breaks the kiss just to nibble on his ear. Jace moans, hitching his hips against her. His hands drop to her breasts, and she makes a breathless noise as she matches his motion.

“Bed’s—over there—” 

Jace groans and lets her back him against it. “Krokt.” He pulls her down on top of him, and then he’s scrabbling with the buttons on her shirt.

“Mmmm,” she murmurs, her tendrils combing through his hair, across his face and throat and neck.

“Can I—can I suck on them?” Jace asks, feeling heat rising to his cheeks.

Vraska blinks at him in surprise, then smiles wickedly. “My tendrils or my tits?”

“Yes,” Jace responds rashly, and she laughs.

“Let’s start with the tits then,” she says, her voice turning dark as she guides his head forward, as he opens his mouth obediently and takes her erect nipple, sucking hard. She moans, grinding against him. “ _Krokt_ , Jace. _Yes_.” He takes her other breast in his other hand and whines a little breathlessly. It’s safe. There’s time. There’s time.

They lie like that for a few minutes, just moving against one another, mostly clothed, and then Vraska pulls back, takes a breath, and reaches for her trousers. That beat—that pause—Jace is almost dangerously familiar with it. “You don’t have to take your clothes off, if you’re not comfortable,” he says.

Vraska looks at him, and her eyes are dark and dilated and full of an emotion Jace doesn’t know if he knows, because he is not good at this—he’s flying without an anchor here, and when’s the last time he went to bed with anyone, anyone who wasn’t Liliana? “I want to be comfortable,” she says slowly. “I want to try.”

He nods jerkily again, and she pulls her trousers down in one smooth motion. Her hips—Jace really, really wants to get his hands on her hips, and based on that hesitation, he’s not exactly surprised at the anatomy she has between her legs. He knows (too well, so well, so extremely well) why she might worry, but he also knows that this worry, at least, he’s well equipped to deal with.

“I want to, too,” he mumbles, and he wants it to sound suave and comforting but mostly it just sounds awkward, and he just about gets himself tangled up in his own trousers— _you’re taking those off before your cloak, Jace, that’s really smooth—_ Vraska does chuckle at him, but it’s in a way that doesn’t feel like he’s being judged. It feels like they’re sharing a joke, as he hastily spreads his legs, then pulls off the cloak, then his shirt. She has scars too—so even that is less frightening. Not as many as he does, but most people don’t have as many scars as Jace.

Vraska comes back over to the bed and kisses him until he’s breathless again. “Anything I shouldn’t touch?” she asks. Jace considers it, then shakes his head.

“You?”

“Oh, no,” Vraska says darkly. “How much of my tendrils do you want?”

“Krokt,” Jace says and his mental walls shudder for an instant before he’s able to reassert them. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“You can share fantasies,” Vraska says breathlessly. “ _Please_ share your fantasies. I want to know what you want.”

He nods, and she kneels on the bed between his legs, waiting. It’s easier to control when he has something _to_ control, as opposed to just trying to stop himself from doing anything, and he leans forward and presses a hand to her face, letting the thoughts slip from his mind to her mind, a different kind of intimacy, but his fingertips are tingling as he lets go.

“I think that can be arranged,” Vraska smirks. “You’ll have to turn over, though.” She pauses, thoughtfully. “Turn over, Jace,” she says darkly.

“Yes, Captain.” He turns onto his front and lets her push him down against the pillow, feels her tendrils wrap around his throat as she presses against him from behind. Several of the tendrils push against his lips, and a moment later Jace is drowning in her, her taste on his tongue; she’s inside him _everywhere_. The tendrils tighten as she begins to move, and he moves with her. Dim dark stars burst in front of his eyes as his windpipe constricts. The world narrows to the rough coverlet beneath his hands and knees, to the salt-sweat taste of her, to the slick feel of her, the softness of her breasts pressed against his back.

He’s chanting her name inside his head, and it makes her moan and move faster, harder, the all-encompassing darkness overwhelming him. She lets him take a sudden, gasping breath, and it’s so much, it’s too much; that one single gasp of air into painful lungs is the most beautiful thing he’s ever tasted.

She bites the back of his neck as well as she moves, her hands stroking down his chest and belly, onto his thighs. He reaches back to touch her, to hold her as best he can, dizzy and half passing out with pleasure and with lack of air. “Jace,” she whispers in his ear. “ _Jace_ —” And it’s so much more than he’s ever expect or thought he deserved, the way she’s holding him, safe and held and curled across him protectively—

He slips over the edge as she lets him take another breath. It’s the least violent climax he thinks he’s ever had; it’s just a soft tumble into delicious warmth, and he feels her follow after in the echo of it, her hand clutching at his thigh.

Jace tumbles forward and lies there, breathing hard, trembling a little, fuzzy and warm. Vraska curls up beside him, her tendrils petting and petting his hair, and he turns awkwardly sideways to kiss her cheek. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” she asks, sudden worry flaring in her eyes, that sudden terrified bolt of _did I do something wrong_ that Jace knows only too well.

He cups her chin with his hand. “Better than I have been in a long time, I think.” He feels her muscles relax against him, and she puts a leg over his.

“Good.”

He’s smiling at her so widely it might be hurting his face. They have time. It’s not a cure. This—what this is between them—it’s not a cure. He’s not magically better, not the way he sort of was when he was here without his memories. But it’s a step. And they have time to take as many steps as they need.

“My captain,” he says softly and watches the way the smile curls across her face at that.

“Will you stay with me?” she asks.

“For as long as you’ll have me.”

**Author's Note:**

> for dysphoria/dnws: jace and vraska have penetrative sex & neither of them has had bottom surgery, though jace has had top surgery & vraska has gotten herself boobs


End file.
